XM Canada loses $30.7 million in fiscal 2008

[hugh]

XM Canada today reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended August 31, 2008. The company reported operating losses of $30.7 million for the year despite a whopping 86% increase in revenues to $39.5 million.

I don't think there is any way you can spin a $30.7 million dollar loss on $39.5 million in revenue as a good thing when you are in your third year of operation.

XM would need to double revenues (and by extension subscribers) to be profitable.

There are consistently adding about 15,000 new subs a months so to get to a million subs from 497,000 would take about 34 months.

[Walter Dnes]

Can someone explain the following to me? XSR (XM Canada) reports a 30 million dollar loss for the 12 months ended 2008/08/31, but according to the press release http://www.xmradio.ca/pdf/csr/2008/2...ss_Release.pdf page 6

• Total accumulated deficit Aug 31, 2007 = $196,222,151
• Total accumulated deficit Aug 31, 2008 = $270,546,831
• Total shareholders equity Aug 31, 2007 = $146,856,436
• Total shareholders equity Aug 31, 2008 = $84,011,639

In the 12 months ended 2008/08/31 the total accumulated deficit went up $74,324,680 and shareholders equity went down $62,844,797. How does this translate to only a 30 million dollar loss???

Another couple of pessimistic items...

• extrapolating the decline in the last 12 months, shareholders equity hits zero around the end of 2009
• The results were to 2008/08/31. This does not include "the quarter from hell" starting September 2008. It's going to be a lot worse than the same quarter from last year.

[hugh]

It was a $30 million operating loss.

Contrary to Gertrude Stein, a loss is not a loss is not a loss.

From the same release

Adjusted Operating Profit (Loss) for the year ended August 31, 2007 and August 31, 2008 was
($50.6 million) and ($30.7 million), respectively, an improvement of $19.9 million. Pre-Marketing
Adjusted Operating Profit (Loss) improved by $17.8 million from ($22.1 million) in 2007 to ($4.3
million) in 2008.

When discussing profits and loss, operating loss is commonly the one used to describe the current health of the business. For many analysts the "pre-marketing loss" is interesting but ultimately a meaningless loss number because you have to market your product but XM makes a big deal of it in their financial loss.

[Kieran]

I'm lost